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Camouflage Tree
Camouflage trees (also known as fake trees, false trees, and observation trees) were observation posts invented in 1915 by French painter Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scevola while leading the French army's ''Section de Camouflage''. They were used by France, UK, and Germany in trench warfare during World War I. Nomenclature English speakers also called camouflage trees "fake trees", "observation trees," and "false trees". Germans called them ''Baumbeobachter'' (English: tree observers). Context During World War I, both sides on the Western Front were engaged in trench warfare, making observations of enemy forces' activity difficult. Use The camouflage tree was invented by the French painter Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola, leader of the French Army's ''Section de Camouflage'', at the request of General de Castelnau. It was first used in May 1915 during the Second Battle of Artois. The French Army subsequently shared the design with the British Army, who assigned S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucien-Victor Guirand De Scévola
Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola (14 November 1871 in Sète, France – 29 March 1950 in Paris) was a French painter. He is known for his pioneering leadership of the ''Camoufleurs'' (the French Camouflage Department) in World War I. Early life De Scévola was a student of Fernand Cormon and Pierre Dupuis at the École des beaux-arts de Paris. Pastellist De Scévola was a pastellist, remarkable for his silky, velvety and smooth style. "Making his only aesthetic concern accuracy of the most naked kind" (E. Benézit), he left an extensive body of work including scenes of alcoves, landscapes, flowers and society portraits. However his Symbolist-inspired works are particularly esteemed. He exhibited at the Salon des artistes français. De Scévola was a member of the ''Société des Pastellistes Français'' and the ''Comité de la Société des Beaux-Arts'' de Paris. He was made an Officer of the Légion d'honneur in 1914, by which time he was known as an elegant society ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
No Man's Land
No man's land is waste or unowned land or an uninhabited or desolate area that may be under dispute between parties who leave it unoccupied out of fear or uncertainty. The term was originally used to define a contested territory or a dumping ground for refuse between fiefdoms. In modern times, it is commonly associated with World War I to describe the area of land between two enemy trench systems, not controlled by either side. Coleman p. 268 The term is also used metaphorically, to refer to an ambiguous, anomalous, or indefinite area, in regards to an application, situation, or jurisdiction. It has sometimes been used to name a specific place. Origin According to Alasdair Pinkerton, an expert in human geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, the term is first mentioned in Domesday Book (1086), to describe parcels of land that were just beyond the London city walls. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' contains a reference to the term dating back to 1320, spel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Inventions
Arts and entertainment * Gothic art in the mid-12th century. * Ars nova: a musical style which flourished in the Kingdom of France and its surroundings during the Late Middle Ages. * Oboe, or ''hautbois'', in the mid-17th century France, probably by Jacques-Martin Hotteterre and his family or by the Philidor family. * Burgess, Geoffrey, and Bruce Haynes: 2004, ''The Oboe'', The Yale Musical Instrument Series, New disney world, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press. pp. 27, 28, 102. * Carse, Adam: 1965, ''Musical Wind Instruments: A History of the Wind Instruments Used in European Orchestras and Wind-Bands from the Later Middle Ages up to the Present Time'' New York: Da Capo Press. p. 120. Variants of the oboe like the graïle, the bombard and the piston were later created in Languedoc and Brittany. * Many bagpipes were developed in France, including the Biniou, the bodega, the Boha, the Bousine, the Cabrette, the Chabrette, the Cornemuse du Centre, the loure, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science And Technology During World War I
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Military Equipment Of World War I
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct military uniform. It may consist of one or more military branches such as an army, navy, air force, space force, marines, or coast guard. The main task of the military is usually defined as defence of the state and its interests against external armed threats. In broad usage, the terms ''armed forces'' and ''military'' are often treated as synonymous, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include both its military and other paramilitary forces. There are various forms of irregular military forces, not belonging to a recognized state; though they share many attributes with regular military forces, they are less often referred to as simply ''military''. A nation's mili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Military Camouflage
Military camouflage is the use of camouflage by an armed force to protect personnel and equipment from observation by enemy forces. In practice, this means applying colour and materials to military equipment of all kinds, including vehicles, ships, aircraft, gun positions and battledress, either to conceal it from observation ( crypsis), or to make it appear as something else (mimicry). The French slang word ''camouflage'' came into common English usage during World War I when the concept of visual deception developed into an essential part of modern military tactics. In that war, long-range artillery and observation from the air combined to expand the field of fire, and camouflage was widely used to decrease the danger of being targeted or to enable surprise. As such, military camouflage is a form of military deception. Camouflage was first practiced in simple form in the mid 18th century by rifle units. Their tasks required them to be inconspicuous, and they were issued ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Technology During World War I
Technology during World War I (1914–1918) reflected a trend toward industrialism and the application of mass-production methods to weapons and to the technology of warfare in general. This trend began at least fifty years prior to World War I during the American Civil War of 1861–1865, and continued through many smaller conflicts in which soldiers and strategists tested new weapons. World War I weapons included types standardised and improved over the preceding period, together with some newly developed types using innovative technology and a number of improvised weapons used in trench warfare. Military technology of the time included important innovations in machine guns, grenades, and artillery, along with essentially new weapons such as submarines, poison gas, warplanes and tanks. The earlier years of the First World War could be characterized as a clash of 20th-century technology with 19th-century military science creating ineffective battles with huge numbers of ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian War Memorial
The Australian War Memorial is Australia's national memorial to the members of its armed forces and supporting organisations who have died or participated in wars involving the Commonwealth of Australia and some conflicts involving personnel from the Australian colonies prior to Federation. Opened in 1941, the memorial includes an extensive national military museum. The memorial is located in Australia's capital, Canberra, in the suburb of . The Australian War Memorial forms the north terminus of the city's ceremonial land axis, which stretches from Parliament House on Capital Hill along a line passing through the summit of the cone-shaped Mount Ainslie to the northeast. No continuous roadway links the two points, but there is a clear line of sight from the front balcony of Parliament House to the war memorial, and from the front steps of the war memorial back to Parliament House. The Australian War Memorial consists of three parts: the Commemorative Area (shrine) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of Britain and its Empire during the First World War. The museum's remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914. As of 2012, the museum aims "to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and 'wartime experience'." Originally housed in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, the museum opened to the public in 1920. In 1924, the museum moved to space in the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, and finally in 1936, the museum acquired a permanent home that was previously the Bethlem Royal Hospital in Southwark. The outbreak of the Second World War saw the museum expand both its collections and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Messines (1917)
The Battle of Messines (7–14 June 1917) was an attack by the British Second Army (General Sir Herbert Plumer), on the Western Front, near the village of Messines (now Mesen) in West Flanders, Belgium, during the First World War. The Nivelle Offensive in April and May had failed to achieve its more grandiose aims, had led to the demoralisation of French troops and confounded the Anglo-French strategy for 1917. The attack forced the Germans to move reserves to Flanders from the Arras and Aisne fronts, relieving pressure on the French. The British tactical objective was to capture the German defences on the ridge, which ran from Ploegsteert Wood (Plugstreet to the British) in the south, through Messines and Wytschaete to Mt Sorrel, depriving the German 4th Army of the high ground. The ridge gave commanding views of the British defences and back areas of Ypres to the north, from which the British intended to conduct the Northern Operation, an advance to Passchendaele Ridge an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesen
Mesen (; french: Messines, , historically used in English) is a city and municipality located in the Belgian province of West Flanders. On January 1, 2006, Mesen had a total population of 988. The total area is 3.58 km2 which gives a population density of 276 inhabitants per km2. The municipality comprises only one main settlement, the town of Mesen proper. An exclave to the west of the main territory is surrounded by the municipalities of Heuvelland and Comines-Warneton. Villages neighbouring the municipality: * a. Wijtschate (in the municipality of Heuvelland) * b. Warneton (in the municipality of Comines-Warneton) * c. Ploegsteert (in the municipality of Comines-Warneton) Mesen is the smallest city in Belgium. It is a municipality with language facilities. Mesen is twinned with Featherston in New Zealand in part due to the location of the New Zealand World War I Memorial, which has annual Anzac Day commemorations on 25 April. History In 1062, Adela, wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
